Welcome to the Purpose Driven Investor, where we build more than portfolios, we build communities. I'm your host, Robert Howell, a real estate investor and founder of Define Communities. Each week, we'll explore how purpose and profit connect through affordable housing, land home packages, and impact-driven investing. If you're a lender, land seller, or a partner who believes money should move with meaning, you're in the right place. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Purpose Driven Investor podcast. I'm your host, Robert. And today's episode is a great example of what's possible when you stop thinking local and you start thinking strategic. Our guest today is Jack Watson. He's the founder of Prime Property Partners. Jack is a real estate agent who has spent the last five years building and running a residential real estate team up in Massachusetts and while simultaneously running a virtual land flipping business and land home package business across multiple states. Over the past two years, Jack has been flipping houses in Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina while running virtual land deals. And now he's executing fully virtual land home packages in Tennessee, which is awesome. And I can't wait to hear more about it. What I love about Jack's story is that it shows how modern real estate investing is no longer limited by where you live. With the right systems, partners and mindset, you can build real assets in the best markets, not just the ones that are closest to you. Today, we're going to talk about virtual investing, land-home execution, building teams across state lines, and how to scale real estate with intention instead of chaos. Let's jump in. All right. So Jack and I have known each other for a bit and, um, we'd love to just jump into it and talk a bit about your original story and kind of how you got into real estate. So talk about how you got started into real estate and, and Yeah, so it's a good question and kind of a longer one, but I went to college just like everybody else does out of high school when they can and was studying to be a doctor, quickly realized that you don't start making money until about eight years later and then you get to pay back about a quarter million dollars in debt, if not more. Or more. Right. Or more. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And then you're just sort of locked into being a doctor if you ever want to pay off those loans. So I was looking for a little bit more freedom, a little bit more financial freedom and time freedom and just sort of stumbled across real estate. The college I was at, UMass Amherst, has an amazing real estate investing program. So I got to learn from somebody that was doing it for quite a bit of real estate investing all over the country. And then got my real estate license when COVID hit, started selling houses, started building a real estate team and actually started investing. So So how did being an agent and building a team shape That's a great question. It's something that really just helps out, I think, the entire process. Because being a real estate agent and seeing a million and 10 things go wrong over the course of five years of being a real estate agent, you just get an appreciation for the fact that things will go wrong. When they do go wrong, you just got to deal with them. That combined with just people management, which I've always said is just a form of adult babysitting, really. Um, it's, uh, it's something that has definitely helped me just from understanding how a real estate deal works from start to finish, but also then going into, Hey, how do we manage everybody Love it. That's good perspective. And so true, right? You probably saw all the mistakes and things you could do better, uh, from the beginning. Right. And, but, but you're lucky enough. They weren't your mistakes. There were other people's right. Right. Exactly. Right. And Now I'm accountable, I guess. So which is good. Which is good. I So why did investing feel like the That's a good question. I think it was always this step. I had no desire to be, I guess, a real estate agent that never owned anything. I think one of the benefits of being an agent is you get to see homes before they go on the market. You get to network with builders and contractors and start to build that. We always talk about generational wealth. It was something that I had always been interested in, always interested in being an investor agent. It took a couple years to build up some capital and build up the connections and confidence to get off the couch but. Yeah about two years ago we just started doing our first investment was a two family that we lived in and currently live in and i will live in that two family for as long as my wife let That's smart. The first house I lived in in Atlanta, Georgia, I didn't own it, but I rented it for $500 a month and we were so ready to get out of it. But I wish I would have stayed in that for as long as I could. You know Right. I mean, my mortgage is paid for and that's not a thing that most people can say. So it's not so bad to Love it. All right, let's talk about making the leap into virtual investing and investing out of state. So as Yeah, it's a good question. And I think that's where majority of people start. And that's where I started. I have a two family and then a three family as well in my hometown that I live in. And it just got to the point where I was seeing the availability of deals, the availability of no money no availability of work was really just not lower than i thought it could be elsewhere so just started looking into other markets and where people are moving and settled on tennessee is kind of our, adopted investor state and it just in terms of the capital required in terms of the. I guess the boots on the ground required, it was something that we just built, I guess over time. I think a good analogy that I've heard in the past couple of months has been, we found a blue ocean instead of Massachusetts, which in some cases is a red ocean. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of money, and for somebody first starting out in real estate, it's a tough area to get into just because the barrier to entry financially and also the know-how. is tough. I say this to people all the time that if you want to pull a permit in Massachusetts to build a house, you're looking at minimum of about three months, I'd say, sometimes less, sometimes more. But you should budget for about three months, where in most of the towns that we work in down South, it's two days to a week is usually what we see. It was just a better fit for me and what I was looking That's great. Okay. Okay. Good. So what, um, as you looked at Tennessee, what made Eastern Tennessee most It was where we started land flipping initially. It was the first market that I picked. It was the market where I saw that everybody, or at least the metrics that I'd seen, people were just moving into. And I think that's something that you just have to get a feel on. You can certainly do all the research you can, but I actually flew out there one time and just started asking as many locals as I could, hey, how many out-of-state license plates have you seen? Where are people moving to? Do people want to just be around the cities or do they want to be more rural? When we did that, we just got an idea of, okay, people are moving here. There's quite a bit of people moving here. They're moving here because there's no state income tax and there's much more available land. Just everything we had seen, we said, all right, well, let's get started. We sent out our first mailing and we got a couple of leads back and that was it. That was That's huge. So tell me, tell me how that first deal looked like. What, what, what were, what was it and what Yeah, it was it was a not a wholesale deal. It was a wholetail deal. So it was something we had bought. It was a piece of land we had bought for like ten thousand dollars. And then the neighbor actually reached out to us because they saw our sign and and they wanted to sell their land. And we bought their land for nine thousand. So we're into it for about 19, which was cool. And then we sold the entire package for, I think, 52. I actually have a check here right on my wall now. Forty nine nine. So I got a check on my wall right over here. here. And that was what, just a couple of years ago? Yeah, that was our first Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. We'll talk about your growth. And the reason I'm saying that is good. I will talk about your growth here in a minute. Um, okay. That's awesome. So, um, when you talk about flipping and doing land deals across state lines, um, What do you think is harder? It sounds like you've done a little bit of stuff locally. What's harder? Is it flipping locally or virtually? And that could be flipping in the physical sense or just flipping land. It's such a good question. Honestly, I would say in terms of finding boots on the ground and finding contractors, it's probably easier to do it locally, just because there are real estate meetups you can go to in your market, and there's realtors you can talk to that know people. And if you've been there for so many years, you just have those connections. But it's not as hard as people think to find boots on the ground to find good partners, people that actually want to help grow your business and be truly partners, not just people that you hire, and if you're doing it out of state. I guess the one thing we did is, and just being a real estate agent, I know the value of a good real estate agent. There's also the opposite side of that. If you get a real estate agent who just sucks rocks, honestly, you're going to get screwed. But I just started talking to real estate agents that were selling products like the ones that we were buying or ones we were building and just asking them, hey, who do you use for a site crew? Hey, who do you use for your HVAC, for your electric, for your surveying? I think you had taught me this originally, Robert, which was you just got to ask people that are doing good work for you now who they would recommend, And if they do good work, more than likely the people they recommend will also do good work. And it took, I don't know if you remember that Beeline friendship, but the setup crew that we initially had was just, I'll never work with them again. And it sometimes takes that to really understand who's good and who's bad at what they do. So it's a couple of mistakes along the way, and that's okay. Yeah, that's part of it. And I was talking with somebody the other day about it where, you know, there's sometimes where you just hired a bad crew, right? And you learn from that. But then there's also times where you just outgrow, right? And maybe the person that you started with at the beginning was great, but they just weren't prepared or didn't have a desire to grow at the same rate that you did. And so you have to find somebody that is That's a good one. Actually, one of my best contractors right now, he's fantastic, but he is, you know, so busy, I guess, and he doesn't want to expand his crew. He's booking, I think like six weeks out on most jobs and just with the So we're, uh, we're moving over to somebody else right now. Makes sense. Hope he's not listening. Yeah. When you talk about virtual land deals or virtual land home deals, what are the systems that matter most as Yeah, it's another good question. So I'd say mostly right off the bat, you just want to have a good checklist, you know, of what to look for. I think this is something that you had taught me originally, which is, you know, every deal, you've got to make sure, all right, where is the water? Where is the sewer? Where is the electric? Can we figure out whether or not there are deed restrictions, whether or not there are zoning issues, whether or not there are HOA restrictions? What does it take to get a building permit? What does the site work look like? Have we gotten quotes or are we just guessing what the site work's going to be? Really, when you break it down, it becomes a well-oiled machine, but you have to have that checklist there and you can't compromise that. I remember one deal we worked on where You know, we actually, we still made money, but we didn't make as much money as we thought we would. We were estimating our site work costs. And based off of what we thought was a high estimate, turns out our high estimate was not high enough. And that's something where, yeah, it just sort of hit us in the ass, if you will. And that's something where it's important to just have those. We also use a couple programs like LandID and Acres. Acres, I cannot talk highly enough about. It's one my site crew sent me. It'll show you the exact, you know, where water is, where floodplains are, where elevation is. So we don't buy anything if it's over a 20% slope, and that's something where my site crew can certainly go out there and take a look at it, and they can, but if we can just look on our laptops and make sure that we can find that right off the bat, it eliminates a lot of bad properties that we would otherwise have looked at, and now we can just cross them off the list. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And we also make sure that we're getting a building permit every time before we close. Because I want to make sure that as soon as we close, I can get a shovel in the ground the next day. And we That's great. We haven't secured building permits or setup permits before we close, but we do try to get the septic permit and the address before we close. So, then it's immediate, but I like adding that to the Right. There's some towns that won't let you do that, as I'm sure you've run into. I have one town, I won't say which town it is, but they are adamant they will not issue a building permit until you own it. Even if you've got everything, even if they've said it good, they just won't issue it. Once we close, it'll still take them two weeks to issue a building permit, even if we've got everything. That's You're just waiting around, twiddling your thumbs and nothing you All right, so now we're talking a bit about land home packages, so land and mobile homes together. What attracted you Yeah, good question. So, number one, barrier of entry financially. If you're looking to build a stick-built home, you're going to have to come with a good amount of money or find financing for that good amount of money. For the land home packages, at least in our market, we are usually somewhere around $170 all in, and we're selling for about $250. So the margins there are pretty good. So in terms of that, really it came down to, all right, well, we just have to find the land. And we had found that at least these land home packages, the way that you've taught in your course, and I've talked to a couple other people about, they are the nicest product in our market at the most affordable price. And that's where I want to be. I'm a big fan of American gangster movie and one of the lines is hey i want a product that is better than the competition at a price that is cheaper than the competition and that's what. These are really it helps you talk about purpose driven investor i've done landflips for people that, buy million dollar houses and put them there and turn them into very nice airbnb rentals and it doesn't really solve anything when it comes to affordable housing at all so with these number one we're making good money but number two it is just a process that actually helps people get into home ownership which is something that i'm very very passionate about. Um, good example is the average age of a first time home buyer has jumped from 34 to 40 in the past five years. And that's, that's not so good. Um, that that's really not great. So make good money and good margins and really help them solve a problem. And then the timeline it's, it takes us three months to put a brand new home in the ground, you know, maximum usually. Uh, so that's something that is perfect for us. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. All right. I would say all of the above for me. You know, I think land home packages are so many things that, um, you know, benefit us as an investor, but then also have a benefit to society or to the community from an affordable housing standpoint. Uh, it's huge. What do you think, uh, as you think about land home packages, where do most people overcomplicate this model? In terms of, I guess, like what you think about, um, yeah, like getting started or what you think about, you know, there's, you've taken lots of action, right. And not, I don't recall how long you've been doing this now. What? Nine months, eight months. Yeah. And we are currently working on 17 projects right now. So, so nine months, 17 projects, like you clearly didn't overcomplicate it. Right. But, um, you, you interact and talk with a lot of people that want to get started They're overcomplicating it in terms of how everybody, you know this Robert, how everybody overcomplicates everything. They think they need to know everything right off the bat and they need to know exactly what all their costs are and this and that and they need to, you know, just have everything buttoned up before they make an offer. And I'll tell this, I, you know, had purchased your course and I think I had gone through a couple of the modules, maybe like, I don't know, spent 20 minutes on there and I said, all right, well, I'm just going to look in my market and see what I can find. And that property that we're closing on on Friday, that was the first property I looked at, it was the first property I made an offer on, and it was the first property I got an offer accepted. So it was just, okay, well, let's just try to get something under contract. And let's put in a due diligence period so we can back out if we need to, and then we'll figure out everything else that needs to go on. And if we have to back out because we don't know what we're doing or our numbers were wrong or it's just not a good market for it or anything else, then we'll back out and then we'll move on to the next one. I have backed out of quite a few deals just because, hey, we learned a lot about what we were doing. So, I would just say, just get started, just get something under contract. Um, you don't have to purchase it. You know, at the most you lose an earnest, you lose your earnest money deposit if you don't have a due diligence period, but that can be like a hundred bucks if you really want it to be. So just Yeah. I had a conversation with someone right before this and it was like, we were going through all the details, how to find a market and, uh, how to find land. And, you know, I told him, I said, Hey, Don't worry about everything else. You don't know anything, which is fine. The only thing you need to worry about is how to find land, right? And if you find a piece of land, we can show you the rest, and there's plenty of people that can help you through the rest of it, right? One thousand percent. You know, that step, the moment you get under contract, the moment you negotiate it, it's accepted. That really kickstarts you. Right. And. You've got due diligence, there's a bit of a safety net of contract and Because at that point, you know, once you got it under contract, all right, well, then you, you have to do those questions. You have to call the realtors and you have to call the surveyors and then it's a necessity. But yeah, just, just get something under contract. I got, I think I was telling you, we're starting to provide financing for people that are trying to do this and homes and project management and you know, things like that. And everyone has all these questions about, you know, how does this work and how does this work? I'm like, dude, just find the land and then we'll talk because then it, you know, we can actually compare what we're talking about. to the actual product. It's not just like a sort of ambiguous concept. It's like, no, let's talk about this piece of land in this market where Yeah, that's great. All right. Talk about what you're doing from a land home. And you mentioned financing. Kind of talk Yeah, so we are still doing our own land home packages, so we're still doing spec homes. So when we find a piece of land that looks good enough, we're working with that. We're also looking at doing a couple larger developments, anywhere between 5 and 30 units, partnering with some landowners to be able to do that. We are also looking at some mobile home parks, which we've gotten the opportunity to look at. In particular we're also working with a couple investors looking to do the exact same thing we are because there's plenty to go around i've always said this just have an abundance mindset. There's always more deals out there there's always more money there's always more land you know that's somewhere out there. So we've started providing financing for people looking to get started with a loan to cost ratio upwards of ninety five to a hundred percent, so that way they don't have to come out of pocket with too much money. Also doing project management for people just because we like, I think you've seen my spreadsheet Robert, I try to be as detailed as possible. Yeah, just a few hundred right now. But yeah, we've got a great system with that at this point, and we're also selling homes to people doing it in Tennessee. I would also say that, yeah, none of this was in the works or none of this was even a thought until about eight months ago. So we're still learning, we're still growing, we're still making our business as best as we possibly can be. But I'd rather help as many people as we can get there as well because I mean, I'm a thousand miles away and we're building 17 houses. That's huge. That's a lot of stuff going on, man. Talk about your team. What's your team look like? Because I see you, I see you post on Facebook, like you're still full-time realtor. Um, but you're also doing this. You're also doing other stuff. Like you Not really, no. So for the landown packages and the land flipping that we do all out of state, it is myself and my assistant, and that's it. It's just us two. For the real estate team in Massachusetts, it's myself and two of my business partners, and currently I think five people on the team, if I remember correctly. And we're still putting out good numbers, which I'm happy about. But no, in terms of what you need, I like to keep it a little lean if we can. And we have great partners in the realtors and the surveyors and the attorneys we work with. But that's what we keep in house. It's just me and me Yeah, a couple hours. Yeah. That's a good question. Uh, that's great. All right. So, um, let's go through, I've got a lightning round, so I have five questions here and we'll just go lightning round, uh, responses here. What's Best virtual deal was a piece of land that we bought in teleco village that we purchased for. I want to say$180,000 and we ended up selling it for. I want to say 320,000 and what made the deal even better. is that the seller was willing to finance the purchase of the land for us for 12 months. And we ended up selling the land itself and making a healthy spread, uh, which I was very happy with and helped out some problems we were having at the time. Um, and yeah, we paid off the seller, got That's great. That's a great deal. Um, what's your, what's Biggest virtual mistake was not getting a soil test or a perk test or a septic permit on a piece of land that we are still paying off. I would say that would be, I'm happy to go into more details if you want, All right. What's one tool you can't live without or you can't invest without. Ooh, I looked at Google sheets. I don't know why it just makes sense. You know, we can talk about, you know, the, you know, the AI stuff we're working on and acres and all this other software, but now I need some sort of Google sheets that my team can use, but I can also share to other investors that are looking to invest with us. It's a lot easier to raise private money when you can show people exactly what your process is and how detailed you are with just a sharing them a link. So Google sheets has been fantastic for Really. Okay. That's great. Um, one habit that keeps you focused and, uh, you would, you would say Trying to remain grateful, you know, every single day, you know, writing down five or six things that we're grateful for. And, you know, we're always looking to grow, but every once in a while, taking a, taking a second to look back and say, wow, you know, this is a, it's pretty cool what we're doing. And we certainly weren't doing this a year ago though. Yeah. That's important especially you know for long hard days you know there's there's many times when i think myself man i get to do this what a what a blessing what a what a opportunity versus. And i have to write do i have to write i have to drive and. go visit properties and do Yeah, I get this opportunity, right? And be grateful for it because what I was doing maybe 10 years ago, I probably was wishing to do this, right? Right. I would agree with that 100%. All right. Last question here. What I think it mostly is about what your purpose is. I think there's a lot of people that want to create or they think that they want to create a huge business and they want to be the biggest person in their market and they want to run a company that they can then sell off and this and that and be listed on the stock exchange. I don't know what really people want. But when i'm looking at what i want i'm looking to generate enough income that i can feed my family and take them out to the different vacations we want to go on with the life we want to lead and and then more than that do something that actually makes me feel good about myself like i mentioned before i get to i get to build a product that is a solution for so many people looking for homeownership which is not something that everybody can say. And it's certainly something where we do make profit, but it's, I know that we're helping, um, you know, people out there actually afford homes. So the purpose is Yeah. Love it. Okay. Uh, before Yeah, so you can reach out to me with my personal cell. I have no problem giving that out. It is 508-237-6647. You can also find me on Facebook, Jack Watson Real Estate. And yeah, just reach out, ask questions. You know, questions are good. You know, don't be afraid to All right, everyone, thanks for listening today. Jack, I really appreciate you joining and team. If you're interested in virtual investing, land home packages, uh, growing your money, reach out to Jack, uh, go follow his journey. He's a wealth of knowledge and, um, he's been part of our land home. League education program for a bit of time this year nine ten months and we've really enjoyed having him He shares a ton of resources a ton of knowledge and insight He really is a giver. So reach out to him and you'll enjoy that conversation Jack I appreciate you joining Yes, sir. Thank you, Robert Thanks for listening to The Purpose Driven Investor. If today's episode sparked an idea or inspired you to make an impact, connect with me at howellandsons.com. Join our community of purpose-driven investors who are helping families find stable homes while building real returns. Because when